U.S., Soviets Move Toward Pact to Ban Chemical Arms

In the shadow of their nearly completed agreement to eliminate ground-launched medium-range nuclear missiles, the Soviet Union and the United States are also making progress toward an agreement to ban chemical weapons.

Last week, the Soviets called for a chemical weapons ban to be signed in the first half of 1988, presumably at a Moscow summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Although that deadline may be unrealistically optimistic, hopeful signs abound.

The Soviets permitted a delegation from 40 nations, including the United States, to visit a chemical weapons depot on the Volga River on Oct. 4. The foreigners saw chemical munitions--bombs, artillery shells and grenades--and witnessed a procedure for neutralizing nerve gases and other deadly agents.

Equally significant, the Soviets reversed themselves and agreed to send scientists on Thursday and Friday to visit a U.S. Army depot in Utah where U.S. chemical weapons are stored and destroyed. The Soviets had refused an invitation to the U.S. arsenal in 1983 because they had not wanted to reciprocate.

Despite continual negotiations between the superpowers since 1982 aimed at banning chemical weapons, the Soviets had not even admitted until this year that they possessed such weapons. Now they have agreed to the principle of on-site inspections to monitor any agreement banning them.

A ban on the production and stockpiling of chemical weapons would significantly strengthen the existing 1925 Geneva Convention, which forbids the use but not the possession of chemical agents.

Furthermore, verification provisions in a new chemical weapons agreement could form a precedent for similar inspection measures for the 1972 agreement that bans biological weapons but contains no policing measures. The Soviet Union finally admitted last month that its military operates at least four laboratories capable of experimenting with biological warfare agents.

U.S. officials, while welcoming the new Soviet moves on chemical and biological warfare, complain that they still fall far short of full disclosure of existing chemical weapons and probably of chemical agents, and that the Soviets may be concealing biological agents as well.

At least some of the 19 types of chemical weapons that the Soviets put on display last month were World War II vintage, Pentagon and State Department officials said. Some bombs even had bolting mechanisms that would fit wartime U.S. and British, as well as Soviet, aircraft. Apparently the bombs were copies of Western bombs made more than four decades ago.

“We know they have three or four additional types of chemical delivery systems they did not show and also more chemical agents,” a senior Defense Department official said. “So if this was an example of Soviet openness, we’ve got problems.”

The Soviets deny that the chemical weapons they displayed are obsolete or not representative of their full inventory.

“We showed real samples of chemical charges in the Soviet arsenal in the 1980s,” Col. Gen. Vladimir K. Pikalov, commander of Soviet chemical forces, said in Moscow last Monday. “There are no other types in the Soviet Union.”

Diseases, Toxic Agents

U.S. officials also complain that the Soviets are working intensively with genetic engineering and other modern biotechnology techniques that could be used to produce diseases and toxic agents that are new or tailored for weapons. “This genetic engineering potential is a matter of very real worry to us,” another Pentagon official said.

A U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency official echoed the Pentagon concerns. “Intelligence (agencies) tell us there is no question they are working on new agents,” he said. “The question is how far along they are in the process.”

Even in their new list of biotechnology facilities, the Soviets may not have been totally forthright, the officials said.

The list identifies a score of biological research laboratories equipped to conduct experiments on very dangerous organisms and toxins that require elaborate containment facilities for safety. Among them are four military facilities where, under terms of the biological warfare ban, the Soviets can conduct non-weapons work such as vaccine research.

One military laboratory in the Soviet list is located in Sverdlovsk, a city near the Ural Mountains, where an outbreak of anthrax in 1979 killed “hundreds” of civilians and infected “a thousand or more,” according to the Defense Department’s 1987 report, “Soviet Military Power.”

Although the Soviets insist the outbreak stemmed from anthrax in contaminated meat, U.S. officials are convinced that it was caused by the escape of a significant quantity of anthrax into the air from the Soviet military facility.

The downwind pattern of those infected and the clean-up efforts spotted by spy satellites point to the release of airborne anthrax spores, U.S. officials say. Airborne anthrax, as opposed to the bacteria carried in food, is the form of the disease best suited to military use.

Another point of suspicion is that the Soviets did not list anthrax among the agents on which they are working at Sverdlovsk or at the other three military laboratories. Even if the Soviets stopped their anthrax work after the 1979 accident, possession of anthrax spores in large amounts would have violated the biological weapons ban.

A Pentagon official said the Soviets, with genetic engineering, might be able to modify anthrax bacteria to make them shorter-lived, and therefore, more useful for warfare. Areas now contaminated with anthrax remain uninhabitable for decades.

Genetic engineering might also be used to produce large amounts of highly toxic material, such as cobra venom, which is currently available only naturally from reptiles in minute amounts, the Pentagon official said. The appropriate venom-producing genes could be introduced into bacteria, which would effectively produce the toxin in mass quantities for warfare.

Although the Defense Department has not accused the Soviets of using biotechnology for weapons, its report, “Soviet Military Power,” said pointedly that by employing such techniques, “naturally occurring microorganisms can be made more virulent, antibiotic resistant, and manipulated to render current U.S. vaccines ineffective.”

Although biological weapons have been used rarely if ever, chemical weapons, notably mustard and phosgene gases, were first used during the final six months of World War I. About one-sixth of artillery shells carried chemical agents, according to Harvard biochemist Paul Doty, and international outrage mounted when between 50,000 and 100,000 men died.

But the resulting 1925 Geneva Convention prohibited only the use of chemical weapons, not their production or stockpiling. Subsequent efforts by the League of Nations to ban production also failed.

Military research during the 1930s discovered most of the modern chemical agents, including nerve gases. But although chemical munitions were produced in quantity, they were never used in World War II, probably for fear of retaliation. Since then, the superpowers have concentrated on banning nuclear weapons, not chemical ones.

The moral taboo against chemical weapons has broken down in recent years, however. Aside from their reported use in Yemen, Vietnam and Afghanistan, they have been unquestionably employed by Iraq on the battlefield against Iran, according to a U.N. report. Doty said 16 or 17 nations now have chemical weapons or the relatively low technological capability needed to produce them.

Resumed in 1982

The United States and the Soviet Union resumed talks in 1982 aimed at curbing the spread and the use of chemical weapons. The talks are being held at two levels--bilateral negotiations and U.N.-sponsored negotiations involving 40 nations.

The Soviets sought to block the Reagan Administration from resuming the manufacture of chemical weapons, which the United States had unilaterally halted in 1969. Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir F. Petrovsky warned last Monday that resumed production of chemical weapons, due to begin in mid-December, would torpedo negotiations on a chemical weapons ban.

The Reagan Administration, for its part, probably sought to deflect criticism of its initial reluctance to negotiate seriously on nuclear weapons.

But beyond these narrow political considerations, both superpowers came to realize that as medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe are eliminated, chemical weapons carried by missiles or aircraft could become substitutes in carrying out attacks deep in enemy territory. After nuclear arms, Petrovsky said, “priority should be given to banning chemical weapons.”

With the next round of chemical weapons talks scheduled to begin Nov. 30 in Geneva, the fundamental obstacle is that there is no foolproof way for either side to verify that the other is complying with any accord.

Chemical agents, such as mustard and nerve gases, can be easily manufactured from basic chemicals used to produce fertilizer and insecticides. Loaded into such weapons as grenades and artillery shells, chemical munitions can be hidden among conventional weapons in military depots.

Furthermore, U.S. chemical companies do not want to give the Soviets free rein to inspect their facilities for weapons production.

But next month’s summit in Washington between Reagan and Gorbachev is likely to give new impetus to the chemical weapons talks. Agreement is probably impossible to achieve by mid-1988, as the Soviets say they want, but chemical and biological weapons are clearly the next priority on the arms control calender after nuclear arms.